John Kerry to step down as Biden climate envoy

John Kerry plans to step down from his position as President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy in late winter or early spring, a person familiar with his plans told POLITICO on Saturday.

The person was granted anonymity to discuss a move that has not been publicly announced. Kerry’s departure from the position comes just weeks after he led the U.S. negotiating team at the U.N. climate conference in Dubai, where countries for the first time agreed to work toward phasing down the use of fossil fuels in the coming decades. Carbon pollution from those fuels helped drive the world’s temperatures to the highest level in recorded history last year.

The news was first reported by Axios, which said Kerry plans to help Biden’s reelection campaign. Mitch Landrieu, Biden’s infrastructure czar, also recently announced he would leave his position to join the campaign effort.

Kerry, 80, has been a fixture in the United States’ climate diplomacy for decades. As secretary of State during the Obama administration, he helped negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, which established the framework in which countries agreed to set their own domestic targets for reducing greenhouse gas pollution. The agreement set a goal of keeping temperatures from climbing no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as well as a more ambitious stretch target of 1.5 degrees.

He built a strong rapport with China’s lead climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, who is reportedly leaving his post as well. The relationship between the two veteran diplomats often yielded agreements between world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters to combat the pollution, even as they struggled to maintain momentum for tackling climate issues amid the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.

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Symone Sanders pans ‘Bidenomics’ message

Yet another big-name Democratic political operative is delivering some frank advice to President Joe Biden and his top aides: Time to get out from behind the podium, start interacting with voters and give up on the "Bidenomics" message.

This time the real talk is coming from Symone Sanders-Townsend, who four years ago was part of a shoestring, money-crunched Biden campaign that was just hoping to survive tough early primary contests and hold out until more diverse voters got a chance to weigh in.

Sanders-Townsend went to to serve as a top adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris and is now hosting “The Weekend,” a brand new MSNBC show airing Saturday and Sunday mornings with Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele. We caught up with her at NBC’s Washington studios after a recent rehearsal.

“They talked a lot about acronyms in the beginning and not enough about the plain things," she said of the Biden camp. “They are not going to get ‘Bidenomics.’ Let it go. How about you just make sure they know what you’re going to do and what you did?"

Here's more of what she had to say about the Biden camp’s perceived bravado, what the campaign needs to have Biden doing differently and possible Black voter apathy in 2024:

On the Biden camp’s self-assured approach

“Back in 2019 when he announced he was running for president … they said he was old, they said he was out of touch. A lot of the same things that people are saying now, they said he couldn’t win. … I think that there is a little, ‘Oh, these people trying to tell us how to do it. And we ran our race and our strategy worked,’ which, touché, because they’re right. It did.

“That being said … it is important to have the voices of people who are not insulated in the bubble. People who talk to real people, people who are out there across the country, who are hearing from folks in the barbershops, beauty shops, the Bible studies.”

On the stage management of Biden’s campaign

“You haven’t seen him do what he can do [best]. He’s been on prompter, he’s been standing on stages looking very presidential with the flags behind him. He gives his speech and he gets out. When was the last time you saw Joe Biden do a rope line? When’s the last time you saw Joe Biden in a town hall taking questions from the American people?

“Joe Biden needs to campaign like Joe Biden knows how to campaign. When people see him in a more intimate setting, they stop thinking about how, oh, he’s old, and they start listening to what he has to say.”

On Black voter apathy

“Donald Trump is not getting 10 percent of the black vote. But that doesn’t mean that the Biden campaign shouldn’t be concerned. I think some people are that work over there. … [That’s why] they’ve made record investments in African American and Latino media.

“Black men, Latino men, Black women, base voters in the Democratic Party should also be treated as persuadable voters. … It means organizing events, it means a surrogate operation, and those are things that have not yet been stood up. Now, one could argue, they are hiring up.”

On the Biden administration’s messaging struggles

“They talked a lot about acronyms in the beginning and not enough about the plain things. You ain’t even got to name the legislation. Just tell the people what has happened. And I think that there was maybe too much of a focus on trying to message it tightly up in a nice bow and not enough focus on just, well, how can we make it plain for the people that we want to understand it?

“They are not going to get ‘Bidenomics.’ Let it go. How about you just make sure they know what you’re going to do and what you did? … You can give folks all the numbers about GDP and all these other things, but the data doesn’t move people. Stories move people.”

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As the Middle East heats up, the Navy struggles to deploy replacement ships

A group of warships led by the USS Bataan has done it all over the past six months.

From warning off Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf to patrolling the Red Sea to filling in for an aircraft carrier off the Israeli coast, the workhorse amphibious ships Bataan and USS Carter Hall and their force of 2,000 Marines have been at the center of the action in a volatile Middle East.

Yet the group is past the point that it should have started heading home for some much-needed rest, and is still on station because replacements are in short supply.

“There is no end in sight” for the Bataan’s deployment, one Defense Department official said. The Bataan was “just extended again, and if the president wants to keep them there, they're going to continue to be extended,” said the official, who agreed to speak about current operations under the condition of anonymity.

The U.S.-led strikes on Houthi ballistic and attack drone launch sites Thursday night was predominantly a maritime affair, with Tomahawk missiles launched from a U.S. submarine and F-18 jets catapulted from the deck of the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier near the Yemeni coast. The strikes underscore the role the Navy can and does play in the region, and the importance Washington policymakers place on keeping American ships as a steady presence near any hot spot.

While neither the Bataan nor the Carter Hall were involved in those strikes, their presence is a key part of the U.S. and allied presence in the region, giving commanders options to conduct humanitarian missions, airstrikes or special operations raids.

The ship that would likely replace the Bataan — the USS Boxer — has been delayed for two months and counting, and is only now doing the training required to deploy at some point in the future.

While Navy officials declined to explain why the Boxer has been unable to leave San Diego, the holdup is emblematic of a wider issue with repair and maintenance in the Navy that has seen warships languish pierside for months after they had been scheduled to leave.

And the delays come with a real-world cost, wreaking havoc on deployment schedules. Extended sea tours like the Bataan’s have become commonplace as the Navy has struggled to be able to send ships out to replace the beleaguered crews who are spending weeks or months longer at sea than initially planned.

Originally tasked with patrolling the Persian Gulf after a series of Iranian attacks on commercial shipping last summer, the Bataan, Carter Hall and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit went to sea on July 10. They later rushed to the Red Sea in October after Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in an attack and Israel launched an assault on the militants’ stronghold in the Gaza Strip.

Designed to be a quick reaction force, the ships and their Marines then shifted to the Mediterranean Sea to fill in for the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, which had been at sea for eight months and finally headed for home this month after being extended three times by Pentagon leadership.

Now the Bataan, which is on its sixth month at sea and has no date set to return home, is exercising with NATO allies in the Aegean while staying close to Lebanon and Israel should it be called upon to evacuate civilians or undertake military action in the region.

The Boxer, meanwhile, has spent the past two years undergoing repairs and upgrades to be able to carry F-35 jump jets, a feature that few amphibious ships and aircraft carriers possess. The group is exercising off the California coast, and the official said one option being considered is to send one of the ships out alone “with a contingent of Marines, but not the full contingent it is supposed to have.”

The delay comes at a heady time, as the U.S. Navy has beefed up its presence in the Middle East in response to the war in Gaza that threatens to spill into Lebanon. Even before Thursday’s strike on Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen, U.S. destroyers and aircraft had responded to 26 attacks by the group on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, employing a total of 80 drones and several ballistic and anti-ship missiles since November.

The ships in the region are a major element of the American ability to project power across the Middle East.

The amphibious assault ships like the Boxer and Bataan are a unique tool for American commanders that allows them to launch airstrikes, provide humanitarian support and Marines to use large ship-to-shore landing craft to evacuate civilians from hostile areas. While not considered aircraft carriers, the amphibious flattops are considered workhorses for U.S. military commanders around the globe, who frequently request their presence to showcase American presence and power.

Thursday’s U.S. strikes came in response to the Houthi’s most brazen attack on commercial shipping to date on Jan. 9. American F/A-18s from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with several destroyers, shot down 18 Houthi drones, along with ballistic and anti-ship missiles.

Eisenhower recently left the Persian Gulf to park off the Yemeni coast to provide options for the White House if it chooses to strike Houthi targets, an option the Pentagon is considering.

The heavy deployment of warships to the region has created a complex balancing act for the Navy, which has struggled with getting ships out to sea on time.

The Bataan and Carter Hall moved into the Mediterranean last month to backstop the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, joining the USS Mesa Verde which was already in place. The Ford, the nation’s newest and largest carrier, had already been extended twice before turning for its home port in VIrginia this month after eight months at sea.

The urgency in getting the Boxer out of port, and the lack of a backup, is one of the many side effects of a July 2020 fire onboard the amphibious ship USS Bonhomme Richard, which was undergoing refit in San Diego at the time. The fire, which burned for four days and injured over 60 sailors, forced the Navy to scrap the massive big-deck ship, and has led to a yearslong scramble to replace its presence in the fleet.

“This comes down to poor maintenance management overall,” said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine commander now at the Hudson Institute.

“This is also the problem you have when the fleet gets older, you have no surge capacity, and with the ship repair capacity that is not aligned with Navy plans, which keep changing,” he added. “You’ve got a real shortfall in the number of amphibs you can deploy.”

The DOD official said there are few options for commanders to speed up the movement of amphibious ships out of port as conditions worsen in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific allies look for the U.S. Navy to provide presence in the face of an increasingly aggressive China.

Asked what can be mobilized to meet a crisis quickly, the official conceded, “the answer is no one.”

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Federal prosecutors to pursue death penalty against Buffalo supermarket shooter

Federal prosecutors announced on Friday that they intend to pursue the death penalty against the perpetrator of a 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket.

In a court filing, prosecutors argued that the actions of Payton Gendron, the white supremacist who intentionally killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side neighborhood, rose to the level warranting the death penalty under federal law. Prosecutors pointed not only to the high level of planning involved with the attack, but also the nature of the attack itself, as grounds for capital punishment.

Gendron, who was 18 at the time of the shooting and pleaded guilty to the murders, reportedly wrote a manifesto calling himself a white supremacist and was radicalized on online far-right forums. The case was declared a hate crime by federal prosecutors in May 2022.

Friday's filing marked the first time President Joe Biden's Department of Justice has sought out a new death penalty sentencing and is a break with the administration’s purported stance towards the death penalty.

Biden pledged to abolish the federal death penalty as a presidential candidate in 2019, though he has not taken action to strike it from many sections of the federal criminal code.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on federal executions and a review of the department's usage of capital punishment, without giving a timetable. The moratorium does not prevent prosecutors from seeking death sentences, but the DOJ has largely refrained from pursuing it.

But in cases of hate crimes, Biden’s Justice Department has left that card at its disposal. In 2023, a federal jury sentenced the perpetrator of a 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue to death, the first death sentence of the Biden administration. It also went ahead last year with an effort to get the death sentence against an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, though a lack of a unanimous jury meant that prosecution resulted in a life sentence.

The Justice Department has declined to pursue the death penalty in other mass killings, including against the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said Friday that the Buffalo shooting was an "an absolute tragedy, and the president continues to pray for the victims of this unspeakable act of violence." He added that "the president has long talked about his views on this issue broadly, but we would leave it to the appropriate authorities to speak to individual cases and sentencing decisions," pointing reporters to the Justice Department.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul voiced her support for the Justice Department's decision, saying during a press conference that "the community is still reeling from the atrocity of 10 innocent people on May 14 in 2022 simply going about shopping and were targeted, targeted because of the color of their skin by a white supremacist who was radicalized online."

Republican candidates for president, meanwhile, have embraced the death penalty as part of tough-on-crime messaging. When former President Donald Trump announced his presidential bid, he called for the use of the death penalty against alleged drug dealers. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also increased the availability of the death penalty, amending state law to allow for executions of child rapists and removing a requirement that juries must unanimously determine that the death penalty is warranted during the sentencing stage of a trial.

Adam Cancryn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Austin was integral to Houthi strike despite hospitalization, officials say

The U.S. on Thursday launched the most significant strikes against Iranian-backed proxies in the Middle East since President Joe Biden took office — and it did it all the while the nation’s top military leader was in a hospital bed.

Senior administration officials insist that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was crucial to helping carry out the strike on the Houthis. He has been involved with planning the attack since Jan. 1 — the day he was admitted to the hospital with complications from a prostatectomy. He authorized the final decision for U.S. forces to move forward with the attack on more than 60 Houthi targets and monitored the operation in real-time, two senior administration officials said.

"He was involved in all the discussions and meetings yesterday and was completely engaged in the planning," one of the senior administration official said in reference to Thursday’s operation. The official, like others in this story, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive details relating to the attack on the Houthis.

Austin participated in a Jan. 9 meeting with the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Brown, and head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, to monitor the Houthi attack in maritime shipping lanes. He also spoke twice to Biden and participated in calls with the National Security Council “to discuss response options and execution following the president’s authorization,” a senior defense official said.

In the wake of that attack, the president convened his national security team who presented him with strike options. Biden approved, and instructed Austin, who participated virtually from his hospital room, to order Central Command to carry out the strikes, as POLITICO previously reported.

The details of the secretary’s involvement in the strike comes as the administration faces condemnation from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill who say Austin should have disclosed his hospitalization sooner and more publicly. Some lawmakers have called for a formal probe. Others have said the secretary should resign.

“It's absolutely inexcusable that we're at a time of war, whether it be Ukraine or whether it be in Israel, or whether it be deterrence to Taiwan, or … the Red Sea and with the Houthi attacks,” said Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a House Armed Services Committee member. Wilson is among those calling for Austin’s resignation.

Senior White House officials expressed hope that the strikes, though in the works before the controversy, were evidence that the chain of command was still functional, despite Austin's hospitalization. They noted that Biden continued to show faith in his secretary of defense — who has accepted responsibility for the lapse — and the decision to attack the Houthis demonstrated the importance of continuity at a time of widening national security challenges.

The secretary has been in the hospital for 11 days after a procedure to treat prostate cancer but has been involved in the relevant meetings and discussions for days, Pentagon officials say. There is no public timetable for his release from Walter Reed, however.

POLITICO broke the news last week that the Pentagon did not tell the White House for three days that Austin was in the hospital during a time when the U.S. was preparing for and carrying out a strike on Iranian-backed militia members in Iraq.

Since then, the White House has tried to manage the fallout of what’s been described as one of the Biden administration’s biggest public relations blunders. Members of Congress are itching for more details of exactly how the White House found out about the hospitalization and why it took so long for the Pentagon to alert the president.

Meanwhile, top officials, including National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby and Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Austin could have handled the situation better but emphasized that the secretary had no plans to resign and that the president would not accept one if presented.

The Jan. 9 order from the president to carry out the strikes came after the Houthis launched their most brazen attack on commercial shipping to date, firing around 20 drones and ballistic missiles into the busy commercial waterway, all of which were intercepted by U.S. and British warships.

For months, the Pentagon has been beefing up the U.S. presence in the Middle East, first after Iran threatened commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, then after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack inside Israel which led to Israeli air and ground assaults against the group in Gaza.

The Eisenhower arrived in the region in November, pulled away from a planned European deployment by events in the region and the need to replace fellow carrier the USS Ford, which had already had its eight-month deployment extended several times.

Joe Gould contributed to this report.

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Iowa blizzard cancels GOP events, threatens caucus turnout

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Every campaign takes a certain number of precautions heading into the critical stretch run of a primary. But no one was prepared for the winter hellscape that Mother Nature was about to throw at them in Iowa this week.

Republican presidential candidates braced for a once-in-a-decade blizzard on Friday, a bitter forecast that derailed their campaign plans three days before the Iowa caucus — and threatened to drive down turnout on Monday.

The forecasted blizzard conditions and nearly a foot of snow on Friday prompted event cancellations for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, the two contenders fighting for a second-place finish in Iowa. A Donald Trump campaign event featuring Kari Lake as a surrogate was also called off.

Temperatures are expected to plunge for the rest of the weekend, including caucus night, with life-threatening wind chills as low as minus-45 across the state.

The severe weather followed snow-related event cancellations earlier this week by Haley and Trump, and has prevented the final surge of campaign operatives, national reporters and candidates’ surrogates from being able to arrive in the state.

Haley on Friday was set to hold a series of “Countdown to Caucus Tele-Town Halls” in place of previously scheduled in-person campaign stops in central and western Iowa.

“First, I have to say, I am definitely not in South Carolina anymore,” Haley said in Waukee on Tuesday morning, where a thick layer of snow was on the ground and more was coming down. “This is unbelievable.”

The forecast was only set to worsen.

The National Weather Service office in Des Moines issued a Blizzard Warning for much of the state through early Saturday morning, warning that falling snow and strong winds could lead to whiteout conditions, making driving and air travel hazardous or even next-to-impossible, especially in rural areas.

The super PAC supporting DeSantis, which has organized many of his Iowa appearances in recent months, “postponed” some of his events on Friday, though the Florida governor made it to an early morning conservative breakfast club meeting in Ankeny, where a few dozen attendees still showed up.

A spokesperson for Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, said his campaign would plow ahead with four events around the state Friday despite the weather — even after earlier in the week being forced to cancel a slate of events, pushing his campaign’s SUV out of a snow ditch, and at one point having to address a small crowd by iPad when snow prevented him from arriving in person.

“George Washington braved the weather to cross the Delaware,” the candidate posted on X Friday morning. “Another snow day in Iowa, another day of events for us.”

The National Weather Service, meanwhile, was cautioning Iowans to stay off the roads, instructing drivers to “seriously avoid traveling if possible.” In 2016, a volunteer on Ben Carson’s campaign died from injuries sustained in a car accident on an icy Iowa road ahead of the caucuses.

Audience members at various DeSantis-featured events over the last few days in Iowa have chuckled when the Florida governor mentioned the change in temperature ahead and joked about it being why retirees from the Midwest tend to spend their Januaries in his state. He said he left his coat in Tallahassee earlier this week but assured his audiences that a group of people flying in from the Florida capital this weekend would bring it.

"I got more reinforcements and layers of clothes on the way," DeSantis said Thursday night during a stop at Jethro's BBQ with Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting his candidacy.

But several caucus goers told POLITICO they expected the cold would have an effect on overall turnout, particularly for older adults. Republican operatives in the state have privately speculated that turnout could be below that of the 2016 Republican caucus.

Florida state Rep. Spencer Roach, who is one of more than 50 lawmakers and DeSantis administration officials flying in from Tallahassee to volunteer this weekend and on Caucus Day, told POLITICO the group has been chatting among themselves about how worried they are about the cold temperatures after leaving weather that's been averaging in the 60s.

As snow fell Wednesday night during a head-to-head debate between DeSantis and Haley, Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who has endorsed DeSantis, acknowledged that turnout is likely to be affected. He gave the example of his late mother, who “would have went to every caucus.”

But a sheet of ice on the sidewalks and roads, Vander Plaats said, likely would have kept her home.

“So when you have bad weather like Iowa’s prone to have on January 15 — and we're going to have it, OK? — basically, the advantage goes to the one who built the organization,” he said.

Beginning Saturday evening, the state is under a Wind Chill Watch, through midday Tuesday, including the caucuses. While more snow isn’t expected, temperatures are expected to plunge below zero on Saturday afternoon and are likely to stay there both Sunday and Monday, the day of the caucuses.

Wind chills on Sunday and Monday, especially at night, could drop as low as minus-45 — so low frostbite can develop on exposed skin in fewer than 10 minutes, along with hypothermia in prolonged exposure. At 6 p.m. Monday, one hour before the caucuses begin, the forecast wind chill for Des Moines is minus-31.

The weather poses a test for the get-out-the-vote organizations the campaigns have built.

“This is why you build an organization,” said Jimmy Centers, an Iowa Republican strategist who remains neutral. “For Governor DeSantis and former President Trump, they're gonna be just fine. Iowans know both of them. They're gonna be O.K. with this weather. For Ambassador Haley, she's enjoying momentum at the moment but she hasn't invested nearly as much in organization as those other two candidates.”

Outside groups supporting DeSantis and Haley have each boasted about their door-knocking operations, though the super PAC executing DeSantis’ field program in Iowa has been doing so for months. The ground game for Haley, meanwhile, being carried out by Americans For Prosperity, began in recent weeks.

Trump’s campaign has touted its grassroots network of volunteers that have been active leading up to the caucus.

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FAA launches probe into Boeing 737 MAX 9 door plugs

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether the panel doors on Boeing's 737 MAX 9 jets, such as the one that flew off in the middle of an Alaska Airlines flight last week, match with approved design and manufacturing requirements.

In a statement Thursday, the FAA said its investigation will determine if Boeing failed to ensure that the "plug doors" installed on the 737 MAX 9 planes, which cover over an unused exit door, were safe and appropriate to use and whether they complied with FAA-approved design standards.

"Boeing’s manufacturing practices need to comply with the high safety standards they’re legally accountable to meet," the FAA said in an unsigned statement.

Boeing said Thursday it will cooperate with the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board, which is conducting a separate investigation into the mid-air incident.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun apologized for the incident on Wednesday, telling CNBC it should have never happened. “We’re going to want to know what broke down in our gauntlet of inspections, what broke down in our original work that allowed that escape to happen,” Calhoun said. Calhoun also told Boeing employees this week they will approach any investigation "with 100 percent complete transparency every step of the way."

The FAA sent a letter to Boeing Vice President of Total Quality Carole Murray on Wednesday giving the manufacturer 10 days to provide any evidence or explanations related to the probe. In that letter, John Piccola, director of the FAA's Integrated Certificate Management Division, wrote that "circumstances indicate that Boeing may have failed to ensure its completed products conformed to its approved design and were in a condition for safe operation in accordance with quality system inspection and test procedures."

The FAA investigation is not surprising considering that United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, the only U.S. airlines operating the MAX 9, found additional loose bolts on similar 737 MAX 9 door plugs earlier this week.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are calling for hearings and investigations into the incident, which forced an Alaska Airlines flight to turn around and perform an emergency landing after the door plug was ripped from the MAX 9's fuselage. No one was seriously injured in the incident.

United and Alaska's 171 MAX 9 planes remain grounded pending inspections and potential fixes as of Thursday, and dozens of flights have been canceled across both airlines. The FAA said Tuesday that inspections were paused as they await updated instructions from Boeing to operators for inspecting and maintaining the door plugs. The FAA said it will conduct a "thorough review" of Boeing's revised instructions before potentially allowing the planes to fly again.

United canceled 194 flights on Thursday and Alaska canceled 158, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware, though those totals include cancellations that are unrelated to the MAX 9 issue. Alaska said Wednesday that its MAX 9 fleet would remain grounded until at least Saturday.

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